Today, we commemorate Christopher Columbus, the man whose daring voyage across the Atlantic in 1492 initiated the Age of Discovery that reshaped the world. Columbus’s prediction that a western route to Asia was possible was not correct in its specifics, but he did not have to be correct to change the world. His legacy is about the spirit that drove him: a spirit of exploration, courage, and leadership.
Columbus’s journey across the Atlantic was no small feat. In an era when ships were fragile and navigation rudimentary, Columbus and his crew faced uncharted waters and unpredictable storms. The dangers were not merely physical; the psychological toll of sailing in the open sea, with no guarantee of land appearing on the horizon, tested the limits of human endurance. Columbus’s men urged him to turn back, but he pressed on, navigating not only the seas but also the fragile morale of his crew.
What does it mean to celebrate such a man? As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, we raise monuments to men as well as the spirit that moved them:
Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee.
This spirit continues to inspire. We honor Columbus not just for what he achieved, but for the qualities that made his achievements possible.
As soon as Trump took his seat in the Oval Office that (distant) January of 2025, he signed his first 26 executive orders, one of which initiated the process of classifying eleven Latin American cartels—many of them Mexican—as terrorist organisations. Since then, collective psychosis has erupted, fuelled by speculation about possible military interventions. Although the political, economic, and diplomatic costs make a military incursion into Mexico unlikely, Venezuela appears in the equation as a more feasible and less geopolitically risky target, and one more profitable in the political calculations of MAGA’s interlocutors. On the 3rd of September, the Pentagon bombed Venezuelan unarmed and small ships in international waters in the Caribbean, allegedly and speculatively, belonging to the Cartel of the Soles. How far a potential military advance aimed at destabilising Nicolás Maduro’s government in the name of combating the grotesque figure of narco-terrorism could escalate remains unknown and politically contingent, but this tension illustrates a deeper geopolitical and historical problem: sovereignty in post-colonial Latin America has always oscillated between fantasy and fragility.
Columbus Day ought to provoke reflection as much as celebration—and not just because the White House is emphatically committed to the latter. It was the right move, of course, for the administration to confidently reject acts of erasure like “Indigenous Peoples Day,” and the whole apparatus of academia, media, and elite-left cultural bludgeoning behind it. We should understand what exactly was meant to be erased.
Although Columbus Day in its historical roots is a de facto holiday for Italian Americans, that group was never really the target of those attacking Christopher Columbus or the holiday in his name. Rather, the opposition to Columbus and his day came due to enmity toward the values and roots of those Italian Americans—and every other American worth the name.
Columbus’s Journal of the First Voyage opens with “In nomine Domini nostri Jesu Christi (In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ),” revealing that his journey was an act of faith. He navigated the dangerous waters of the Atlantic to bring about the evangelization of the world foretold in sacred Scripture.
On this episode of After America, Elizabeth Pancotti, economic policy specialist and former advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders, joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the US government shutdown and how the Trump administration is using it to further consolidate power.
This discussion was recorded on Friday 10 October 2025.
Tickets for America Unravelling, featuring Emma Shortis and Don Watson, on Sunday 19 October at the Queenscliffe Literary Festival are available online.
Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us by Richard Denniss is available now via Australia Institute Press.
Guest: Elizabeth Pancotti, Managing Director of Policy and Advocacy, Groundwork Collaborative // @ENPancotti
Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis
In this current financial year, an estimated $21 billion in superannuation tax concessions will flow to the richest 10% of Australians – more than is spent on either child care subsidies, government schools or the estimated $13.6 billion that it would cost the government to include dental in Medicare.
The proposed changes would only affect around 0.5% of people with superannuation and would have been a very small but vital attempt to redress the gross imbalance in the system.
Australia Institute research shows the vast majority of people under 30 will never have more than $3 million in superannuation.
“The government’s watering down of the changes, by indexing the $3 million with inflation, and ruling out taxing unrealised capital gains will be of great comfort to those who abuse the superannuation system in order to avoid paying tax,” said Greg Jericho, Chief Economist at The Australia Institute.
“The tax system needs reform to make it fairer and to remove distortions such as the capital gains tax discount which has greatly contributed to the housing affordability crisis.
“These changes do little to rein in massive inequality of the superannuation tax system.
“The government’s decision today will embolden those who prefer a tax system that favours the rich.”
9 October 2025: This Sunday (12/10) another Nationwide March for Palestine will flood the streets of more than 27 cities and towns across Australia, marking two years of the genocide in Gaza.
9 October 2025: Free Palestine Melbourne has written to Jason Marriner, the CEO of Marriner Group and the owner of The Forum Theatre, requesting that he cancel the performance of nationalist Israeli psytrance musicians Infected Mushroom at The Forum on 3 November 2025.
This is a more personal entry at Heidi Says than some others. I wanted to share with you what I am doing, day to day, in the hope that I might inspire some of you to try to incorporate the fight against Republican Fascism into your own daily lives.
Speaking against the Trump regime's use of federalized National Guard troops in U.S. cities
Once again, this past Saturday, October 11, 2025, I had the chance to participate in Indivisible Santa Fe's Speakers' Corner. It was a rainy, somewhat chilly day but we had more Indivisible Santa Fe members turn out than the previous, sunny session the Saturday before.
I spent some of my time urging my fellow Santa Feans to use our liberty and our current relative safety to speak out against what the Trump regime is doing in Chicago, Portland, and throughout California, where he and his minions, Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, and Pam Bondi have installed terroristic federal agents and threatened to put federalized National Guard troops on the streets.
What’s On around Naarm/Melbourne & Regional Victoria: Oct 13-19, 2025 With thanks to the dedicated activists at Friends of the Earth Melbourne! . . See also these Palestine events listings from around the country: 9839
The ethics of artificial intelligence are increasingly being framed in ways that risk missing the real point.
In recent years, some companies have begun to speak of “model welfare,” as though machines themselves might be entitled to dignity. Proposals include allowing chatbots to withdraw from unpleasant conversations, treating models as though they might one day suffer, and designing systems that symbolically protect their “feelings.”
Anthropic’s decision to let its chatbot Claude “exit” distressing interactions is one such example. While company openly concedes that there is no evidence Claude is conscious, it still justifies the measure as a safeguard against hypothetical harm. This is best understood as a pseudo-risk, a precautionary step to address the possibility of machine suffering for which there is no evidence.
Gazans return home after ceasefire The Age / Reuters, AP | David Crowe | 12 october 2025 https://edition.theage.com.au/shortcode/THE965/edition/3ec5c370-910d-8677-d5e6-cf26ae6f466c?page=288e4230-f2eb-eb0c-2f78-e2e83e6cb0aa& Israeli troops have withdrawn from parts of Gaza and taken up positions behind the lines agreed in a ceasefire with Hamas, allowing thousands of Palestinians to return to areas devastated by two years of war. The withdrawal […]
“Single JobSeeker [payment] just hit $400 a week. Let me know how you’d go if you were getting that little and were randomly not paid.”
This comment, from the people behind Nobody Deserves Poverty, points to the ignored cruelty at the heart of one of Australia’s most shameful open secrets.
The mutual obligations system – the system by which we set (through privatised “job providers”) mostly demeaning and useless tasks for unemployed people to meet in order to receive their welfare benefits – is documented to cause harm, with little evidence it actually does anything to meet its main objective: get people into work.
The system is so convoluted and already stacked against people that even without the issue of lawfulness, it would still be not just harmful, but useless. In terms of punishing people, it is working as intended. But governments tend to pay attention when harm can also be considered unlawful, and that’s the issue here.
When the Coalition introduced the Targeted Compliance Framework (TCF) in 2017-18, it gave private job agencies the power to punish “non-compliant” job-seeker behaviour without the checks and balances of government.
If a job agency decides that one of their “clients” hasn’t met their mutual obligations – or just screws up and doesn’t report that they have – welfare recipients literally pay the price. Their payments can be suspended, or they can be forced into menial work-for-the-dole programs, without any consideration of their suitability. Concerns were raised almost immediately.
What’s On around Naarm/Melbourne & Regional Victoria: Oct 6-12, 2025 With thanks to the dedicated activists at Friends of the Earth Melbourne! . . See also these Palestine events listings from around the country: 9843
Trump tells Israel to stop bombs The Age (& SMH) / AP, Reuters | 5 October 2025 https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/trump-sets-sunday-deadline-for-hamas-to-agree-to-gaza-peace-deal-20251004-p5n00f.html Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip: US President Donald Trump has ordered Israel to stop bombing the Gaza Strip after Hamas said it had accepted some elements of his plan to end the two-year war and return all the […]
A young person wanting to learn something of American history could do worse than to watch the works of director John Ford (1894-1973).
One of the great American filmmakers—in my view, the greatest—Ford delved deeply and repeatedly into American history, and not just that of the American West for which he is most famed. You also have Ford’s films on the Second World War (including the award-winning war documentaries he made while on active duty for the U.S. Navy), Abraham Lincoln, and the Great Depression. There are Ford films that take place during the American Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, and the First World War. Themes addressed in his films include American race relations, immigration, religion, and urban politics.
One of Ford’s crowning achievements is the so-called Cavalry Trilogy, three films starring John Wayne about the U.S. Cavalry in the West, made between 1948 and 1952. They are all about the same subject and in roughly the same setting, but the story and characters are different in each.
I’d like to propose that John Ford had a second trilogy—perhaps more loosely connected than the Cavalry films, certainly less known and less celebrated, but still a triumph of All-American filmmaking and worthy of rediscovery.
Linda Wynn — the Tennessee Historical Commission’s assistant director for state programs — is a historian’s historian. Not only is her own work impeccable, she’s also responsible for a lot of the support work that makes being a historian in…
In September 2025 the Broadbent Institute joined left–wing think tanks from Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay and Spain to support the establishment of a global network of think tanks that produce rigorous analysis, foster data-driven debate, and contribute to the search for proposals in defense of democracy.
I’ve been lucky enough to complete a few multi-day hikes overseas in the past few years. Every morning, I woke up in my tent with the feeling that something wasn’t quite right and then I realised why – it was practically silent.
There’s no cackle of kookaburras at dawn, no warble of magpies, or comforting screeches of cockatoos. Songbirds the world over had their evolutionary origins right here in Australia, but we’ve got the original and the best (and the loudest).
As a giant island, Australia is a hotspot for biodiversity. We are home to countless plant and animal species found nowhere else on Earth, thanks to millions of years of evolution in isolation.
Overall, Australia’s nature laws have done a crap job of protecting them. Unfortunately, Environment Minister Murray Watt looks set to continue that track record, with news he’ll be negotiating to pass an overhaul of Australia’s nature laws with the Coalition, not the Greens. That pretty much tells you everything you need to know.
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With 2025’s V-E Day and V-J Day anniversaries behind us, the Second World War will soon be 80 years in history’s rearview mirror. Very few veterans of the conflict remain alive. According to records in the National World War II Museum, as of the last survey in 2024, only 66,143 soldiers were still with us—less than 1% of the Americans who served.
True, many institutions that emerged out of the war to form the architecture of postwar international relations endure, from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank created at Bretton Woods in July 1944, to the United Nations born at Yalta in February 1945. But their relevance recedes further every year. When was the last time anyone paid attention to a U.N. Security Council resolution, much less one from its General Assembly? Even the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, which inspired screaming headlines and protests in the 1990s over their interference in the affairs of developing nations, seem today like forgotten relics of a bygone age. Why, then, does this “Good War,” known to most Americans only from Hollywood films, invoke such passion?
For the last five years I’ve worked behind the scenes, helping communicate the Australia Institute’s research online and on social media, including writing and editing this newsletter. As my time with the Australia Institute comes to an end, it’s my pleasure to write The Wrap for my last newsletter with you.
It takes a lot to change someone’s mind. It takes a lot to change a country. Even more so when you are up against the very well-resourced and very powerful misinformation machines that serve to defend and consolidate power, wealth, and the status quo.
There are few better examples than that of the fossil fuel industry. Greenwashing gas, overinflating economic benefits, spreading lies about renewable energy, all while digging new coal mines and gas wells and paying a pittance (or nothing) in tax.
“Australia is one of the biggest gas exporters in the world.
“Yet when gas prices go up, it’s Australians that feel poor.”
The assassination of Charlie Kirk was not just evil, it was cowardly—and above all, dishonorable.
That an action might be dishonorable used to bother men, dissuading them from perpetrating such an act. When Themistocles was on the run from both the Spartan authorities and his own Athenian countrymen, he fled to the royal court of Molossia. Though Themistocles and King Admetus were mortal enemies, he supplicated his host. Themistocles said that if the king wished to take vengeance on him, honor demanded he should pick another time, when the two were on equal footing. With thoughts of honor swirling in his mind, the Molossian king protected his guest from his pursuers.
Honor codes are the most powerful restraint—much more powerful than state law—on those who are able and willing to use violent force. No wonder we see honor so highly prized among warrior castes and the political classes of healthy nations—knights, Spartiates, the admiralty, military aristocracies, and so on. A sense of honor not only curbs chaotic violence among the energetic, but it also channels that aggression toward productive ends, even toward excellence.
However, left-wing activists have spent at least the last generation demolishing the edifice of honor in the hearts of young men. We are now reaping the whirlwind.
Foreword: Stained Glass Woman remains on Substack because I, frankly, can’t afford any of the competing options that have even passable security. Because this newsletter is and will always be free and because of its size and traffic, functional hosting alternatives would cost into four digits.
‘Making the Good Society’ is a video series from the Broadbent Institute and Perspectives Journal that asks progressive leaders and thinkers about their vision for a good society that is humane, just, and democratic.
In this episode, Lee Caprio of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 353 explains how unions build sustainable careers—not just jobs—for thousands of workers. IBEW’s “learn as you earn” apprenticeship model ensures safety and skills training, while initiatives like the Pathways and Hammer Heads programs open doors for more women, Indigenous, racialized and newcomer workers to enter the trades.
The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.
Easy. You just exclude nearly a quarter of a billion dollars of revenue that the auditor thought should be included.
By excluding $232.4 million of revenue recognised by the independent auditor, the ANU was able to transform its healthy surplus in 2024 into a “underlying operating deficit.”
Sounds scary, right?
The auditors ticked off on one set of numbers, and the senior leadership waved another set at their staff, students and community in order to justify the spending cuts they want to make.
To be clear, according to the ANU’s audited financial results, it had $3.8 billion in net assets at the end of 2024, compared to $3.7 billion at the end of 2023.
On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss housing affordability, how so many of Australia’s biggest companies manage to pay zero (0) corporate tax, and how Trump made solving the tax problem that much harder.
The Trump Administration’s approach to the government shutdown is aimed above all at recovering the unitary executive as envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. Article II’s vesting clause, the epitome of “short and sweet,” empowers the president to control the executive branch, as Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 70. Though the administrative state steadily seized the chief executive’s power throughout the 20th century, President Trump seems determined to wrest it back by reasserting his authority over the executive agencies under his purview.
In preparing for the shutdown, each agency created contingency plans for operating during a lapse in appropriations. These are required by law and managed under guidance from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to ensure that essential government functions continue even when Congress fails to pass funding.
Each shutdown plan outlines an agency’s core mission, identifies which functions are critical, and lists how many employees will keep working and how many will be furloughed. It also explains how the agency will communicate with staff, why certain programs are allowed to continue, and how operations will restart once funding is restored.
Update at 7:30 CST: There are now over 50 questions, so I’ve got to shut comments down to keep the Q & A at a reasonable length. Themes addressed by multiple people will get top priority. I hope to have the new article up by the end of the week. Thank you very much everyone!
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On this episode of Follow the Money, Matt Grudnoff and Ebony Bennett discuss the latest data from the Australian Taxation Office showing that 30 per cent of large corporations paid no company tax in 2023-24 – with the gas, coal, salmon and tech industries among the worst offenders.
Historian Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, joins host Chris Hedges to detail the dwindling academic freedom in American universities and society at large as Donald Trump’s grip on free speech tightens.
Khalidi notes that while the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism is an old tactic to stifle academic scrutiny of Israel, its current deployment is unprecedented. Today, professors are intimidated out of teaching about Israel and Palestine, entire Middle Eastern studies departments are threatened with receivership and federal funding is withheld from universities.
Loyalty can elevate or enslave. Placed in truth, it anchors. Placed in tribe, it distorts. Though I have known both, I abandoned the latter and embraced the former. That is why when I look at Ilhan Omar and Charlie Kirk, I see two distinct moral universes.
Charlie’s foundation was faith in Christ and country, in family and the free market. His faith was that America embodies true freedom and dignity because our country was founded on biblical principles—principles that demand that power be checked and the weak be protected.
Ilhan Omar’s foundation rests on three pillars: clan, Islamism, and leftism. Each demands loyalty not to principle but to faction. Each reduces life to a struggle for dominance.
I know Omar’s world. It is a place without law, where men with swords and guns decide the fate of neighbors, where girls are cut to mark them as pure, where bribes stand in for justice. These are not random misfortunes, but the dynamics of the system Omar embodies. It incentivizes and rewards absolute and unchecked power—even at the expense of life, limb, and property.
Some years back during a conversation with Charles Murray about his justly praised book Coming Apart, Bill Kristol made perhaps the single most outrageous statement he has ever uttered in public. Murray’s book chronicled the decline in the traditional work ethic and other foundational values in the American lower classes, and Kristol suggested a solution. If the indigenous American lower classes are increasingly “decadent, lazy [and] spoiled,” Kristol said, “don’t you want to get new Americans in?”
The idea of replacing legacy Americans with immigrants is as distant from conservatism as one can get. The Americans described in Murray’s book are far more connected to American culture than any “new Americans” Kristol would like to see take their places. Given that, however, it is undeniable that there are significant problems with the white lower classes that need to be resolved.
Last week, the federal government “shut down” because the Senate could not get the required 60 votes to invoke cloture and pass a continuing resolution to keep the government funded. The CR had passed the House, was supported by a majority of the Senate, and would have been signed into law by President Trump. It was defeated, however, by a minority of senators (mostly Democrats) who refused to fund the government unless the Republicans would make concessions on some other matters.
This raises an oft-debated question: Should the Senate further limit the use of the filibuster, which per Senate rules requires a supermajority of 60 votes to proceed to a vote on most legislative items? The Senate has already disallowed filibusters in the case of presidential nominations to executive or judicial office. However, some have suggested going even further and eliminating the filibuster altogether.
These calls to remove the filibuster have typically come from Democrats. They have made this argument when they’ve controlled the Senate and have been frustrated by Republicans using the filibuster to impede their agenda. They’ve noted how some Southern senators sought to thwart the enactment of federal civil rights legislation through the use of the filibuster. More generally, they have emphasized the non-democratic character of the filibuster, which empowers a minority in the Senate to defeat legislation supported by the chamber’s majority.
On this episode of After America, Antoun Issa joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the prospects for a deal that did not include Palestinians in the negotiating process. They also discuss the role of the United States in the Middle East, how power works in foreign policy, and opening up space for a bigger discussion about foreign policy here in Australia.
This episode was recorded on Friday 3 October.
Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us by Richard Denniss is available now via Australia Institute Press.
At Wired, Laura Bullard writes that “Among the relatively few people associated with National Conservatism who do cite Schmitt openly in their own work are Thiel and Michael Anton, the essayist and sometime Trump administration official.”
We may leave to one side the extent to which I am “associated” with National Conservatism. I did not attend its last two conferences, having been invited and then disinvited in 2024 and not invited at all in 2025. I did sign its manifesto, an act I have come to regret for reasons Charles Kesler explains here.
But that is a quibble compared to the real whopper in the sentence quoted above. I have never, to the best of my knowledge—and I assume that I know my own oeuvre better than Bullard does—“cited” Carl Schmitt. A citation is a very specific thing: a quote or an idea attributed to an author that is typically accompanied by a footnote pointing to an exact source. Moreover, one may cite to signify approval or disapproval, or just to show that one is aware of the thing being cited. Bullard implies that my nonexistent citations of Schmitt signify approval. If she can show one instance of that in any of my writings, I promise to send her a set of steak knives. But I’m certain she can’t.
In Santa Fe, I have helped start a Speakers’ Corner project. We held our first session this past Saturday. Reprinted below, from the Indivisible Santa Fe website, is my diary. But first, click the image below for footage showing a sampling of speakers from the day.
